“With all the talk about how to stimulate it, you’d think that the economy is a giant clitoris. Ben Bernanke may not employ this imagery, but the immediate challenge-and the issue bound to replace Iraq and immigration in the presidential race-is how best to get the economy engorged and throbbing again.

“It would be irresponsible to say much about Bush’s stimulus plan, the mere mention of which could be enough to send the Nikkei, the DAX, and the curiously named FTSE and Sensex tumbling into the crash zone again.

“In a typically regressive gesture, Bush proposed to hand out cash tax rebates-except to families earning less than $40,000 a year.

“This may qualify as an example of what Naomi Klein calls ‘disaster capitalism,’ in which any misfortune can be re-jiggered to the advantage of the affluent.”

The Guardian reports that food prices are rising dramatically, which is coming as a surprise to “UK shoppers aged under 50 [who] have so far never experienced food-price inflation”.

The article cites four reasons for the price increase:

1. Oil prices: “$100 a barrel means food that is four-times as expensive to plant, irrigate, harvest and transport as it was six years ago. Some commodities brokers are now betting on oil going to $200 a barrel within a decade.”

2. Climate: “drought, hurricanes and floods around the world last year made for terrible harvests – from Australia to the Caribbean and the United Kingdom.”

3. Market speculation and use of crops for fuel: “Since George Bush announced a rush to corn-based ethanol it’s done well for American corn farmers – 20 per cent of whose harvest, subsidised by the government, went into fuel tanks rather than flour mills this year.”

4. Economic boom in China and India: “Around the world, and through history, people have eaten more meat as they have become richer. This is called the nutrition transition and it’s now happening, very quickly, in the two most populous nations on the planet.”

Jacques Diouf, head of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, spoke recently of a ‘very serious crisis’ brought about by the rise in food prices and the rise in the oil price. Various global economic bodies are forecasting rises of between 10 per cent and 50 per cent over the next decade.

Creationism. Intelligent Design. Faith-based this. Trust-your-gut that. There’s never been a better time to espouse, profit from, and believe in utter, unadulterated crap. And the crap is rising so high, it’s getting dangerous.

Far out on the high seas, on any given day, hundreds of fishing vessels drag huge nets, big enough to snag a 747 jumbo jet, across the ocean bottom, vacuuming up 150-year-old fish, flattening ancient reefs and destroying everything else in their paths.

TIME Magazine’s Ken Stiers writes:

Only the biodiversity of tropical rainforests rivals that of the deep sea — our planet’s largest wilderness — an aquatic wonderland that is now being systematically razed by what is likely the world’s most environmentally destructive business.

The fishing occurs mostly around the ocean’s most unique topographical formations — submarine canyons, mid-oceanic ridges and tens of thousands of seamounts (most are extinct volcanoes) — which support a stunning profusion of endemic species, many of which are yet to be discovered.

During the last twenty-four hours I have probably experienced the greatest humiliation to which I have ever been subjected.

During these last twenty-four hours I have been handcuffed and chained, denied the chance to sleep, been without food and drink and been confined to a place without anyone knowing my whereabouts, imprisoned.

Now I am beginning to try to understand all this, rest and review the events which began as innocently as possible.

It was a real last-minute deal. There might now be some hope for our children’s future …

‘We will go forward and join consensus,’ Paula Dobriansky, heading the US delegation, told the 190-nation meeting to cheers from many in the audience, minutes after triggering boos by saying Washington was opposed.

More American military veterans have been committing suicide than US soldiers have been dying in Iraq, it was claimed yesterday.

At least 6,256 US veterans took their lives in 2005, at an average of 17 a day, according to figures broadcast last night. Former servicemen are more than twice as likely than the rest of the population to commit suicide.

Such statistics compare to the total of 3,863 American military deaths in Iraq since the invasion in 2003 ± an average of 2.4 a day, according to the website ICasualties.org.

The rate of suicides among veterans prompted claims that the US was suffering from a ‘mental health epidemic’ — often linked to post-traumatic stress.”

As Japanese whalers prepare to set sail for southern waters for their annual whale cull, Labor today indicated it was ready to take strong action to convince the international community that whaling had to stop.

Japan has been widely condemned for its scientific whaling program, which involves the killing of 1,000 fin and minke whales in the southern hemisphere each year.

If it wins office, Labor plans to use military resources, such as surveillance aircraft, to monitor the whaling vessels and gather evidence to mount a case against their so-called scientific research.”